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A gunman firing from his car killed one person and wounded five others in the Paris suburbs on Friday, October 23, in what French President Emmanuel Macron called a "racist terrorist attack." The shootings in Trappes and the neighboring town of La Verrière are being investigated by France's national anti-terrorism prosecutor — and Macron said the attack marks a turning point for the country.
What happened in Trappes and La Verrière
According to the South China Morning Post, the gunman drove through the working-class town of Trappes, southwest of Paris, and neighboring La Verrière, firing at people seemingly at random. Trappes mayor Ali Rabeh said the man was "firing at random, wanting to cause a bloodbath." One person was killed and five were wounded, including a 12-year-old girl who was shot eight times and is seriously wounded but in stable condition, according to the mayor of La Verrière, Nicolas Dainville.
Police arrested the alleged shooter — a 39-year-old man — in the nearby town of Coignières within about 20 minutes of the attack, according to the Associated Press. Officers found him in possession of a submachine gun and tear-gas grenades. Anti-terrorism prosecutors said he had also booby-trapped his flat with three gas canisters and electric wires connected to a timer. The case is being investigated as "murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise."
Why Macron called it a racist terrorist attack
Most of the victims were from foreign backgrounds, and prosecutors are investigating whether they were targeted because of their "real or supposed race, ethnicity, nationality or religion." Visiting Trappes on Friday, Macron said: "What happened here today was a racist terrorist attack. This is a turning point because it is the first time there has been a terrorist act aimed at killing our compatriots and our children for the colour of their skin or what their religion is thought to be."
Mayor Rabeh went further, calling it "objectively a racist, probably Islamophobic attack," noting that the person killed was of African origin and that two cleaners of African origin were among those shot at a school in La Verrière. French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called the shooting "clearly a terrorist crime."
France's tense weekend
The shooting comes as France braces for a turbulent Saturday. Authorities are deploying 70,000 officers across the country ahead of planned cost-of-living protests, and major Paris museums including the Louvre are closing as a precaution — a story covered in detail in the report on Europe's cost-of-living protest wave. It is also worth remembering that France has faced public-health shocks this month too, including the first human case of Shamonda virus reported in the country.
The investigation is still in its early hours. What is already clear is that the attack — random gunfire aimed at people chosen, prosecutors believe, for who they appeared to be — has forced France to confront a form of terrorism it has rarely named so directly: violence driven not by jihadist ideology or separatism, but by racism itself. How the state responds, in the middle of one of its most volatile protest weekends in years, will shape the national conversation for weeks to come.